Meeting Anne

I wanted to preface my Green Gables post with a little history, so that you’ll understand a little better what the trip meant to me.

There is a clouded memory of sitting on the couch with my mother, the year must have been 1986 or ’87, and laughing at two girls on the television. They’d been chasing a cow and had fallen into the mud. I was two.

I’m sure the only reason I remember any of the film at all was because of that scene and because of how shockingly funny it is to a two-year-old to see people dressed in finery falling into a muddy field.

For as far back as I can remember my mother had this book up on her bookshelf. When I was still very small and my naps occurred on my parents’ bed in the middle of the afternoon, my mom and younger brother (I only had one at the time) would be asleep, but it would always take me quite a bit longer to get into my nap. I had too much running through my mind. Whatever was going on outside and across the street at my great-grandfather’s country store. Watching the birds landing on telephone wires outside the window. And running my fingers over the titles of books sitting on the shelf (their headboard was a long bookshelf).

Anne of Green Gables. Bound in a deep, red-brown leather, the titles of the volume were printed in gold leaf—Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery—Anne of Green Gables—Anne of Avonlea—Anne’s House of Dreams. “Green Gables,” “Avonlea,” “house of dreams,” it all sounded so magical to me. Now, I wasn’t reading much at that point (3-4 years old), but I knew enough about how to sound things out that I managed the smaller words and had mom’s help on the bigger ones. Avonlea is a doozy for a kid who hasn’t started kindergarten. Tracing the letters etched in gold was as much as I did for the next six years.

My love for reading had been ignited when I was very small, but it was burning at full force around 3rd grade, thanks to Mrs. Bural and her “reading loft.” I don’t know about the rest of the kids, but that tall, tree house contraption she had in the corner of the classroom was just what I needed to inspire me to finish my work.

It was the fall of 1995 when Mom finally let me take “Anne” of the shelf and begin reading. What a whirlwind that year was. I swept through the first two books in no time and was soon asking around for copies of the others in the series. As luck would have it, one of my classmates had the whole thing and she started loaning them out to me. I was mesmerized by this world and that there was someone out there (like I’ve told people before), who, even if she was fictional, was like me. In Anne I did find a kindred spirit. Someone who liked books, telling stories, wandering the woods, bringing outside things in, and striving hard at the one thing she felt she was good at — school.

That was my life and to see it in print, to see that I wasn’t as odd as I’d once thought…it meant the world to me.

I have carried those stories with me ever since. Through high school and no boys liking me and then boys liking me and realizing that was a little worse maybe than when they didn’t. Onto college and doubts about love and what was really important. College made me jaded. I held little hope that things would turn out much like they do in novels. “Love,” to me, had become a series of decisions. In a way I still do believe that. Whoever you end up married to, it’s going to be work. You just have to decide to stick with it.

But it was when I met Kevin that my mind was changed. My ideas were turned upside down. The dreams and hopes of a little girl had come alive again. In him I had found someone who took an interest in the things I love, the things that make my heart sing. I had all but given up. When God brought him into my life I got a little embarrassed to mention the sweet things that he did for me, because I didn’t know anyone who had a boyfriend (or a husband, for that matter) who took the sort of care and interest that Kevin did.

It was after we were engaged that Kevin revealed to me where he’d planned the honeymoon — Prince Edward Island. He knew of my love for the books and my desire to see the island. It didn’t hurt that we’re both huge seafood fans. I couldn’t believe how blessed I was.

All this is to say that you don’t have to stop dreaming, ever. God knows the desires of your heart. Things that I had dreamed about as a child and forgotten or brushed aside as an adult, realizing the “impossibility” of my hopes, He brought back to me. No doubt to show me that He doesn’t forget, always provides, and cares about even the most minuscule things.

TOMORROW – I’ll tell you about our trip to Green Gables.

Related posts:

1. Kevin the Sheep Herder’s Pie
2. Mosaic of Me
3. Thinking